


La Vie en Rose

by prairiecrow



Series: One Degree of Separation [12]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: Age Difference, Awkward Interruption, Bondage, Clothed Sex, Dominance, Explicit Consent, First Orgasm, First Time, Flirting, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Kissing, Love, M/M, Nipple Play, No Touching, Office Sex, Orgasm Control, Power Dynamics, Programming, Risk-taking, Robot Sex, Robotics, Romance, Science and Sex, Superhuman Strength, Topping from the Bottom, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:21:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe has blossomed under the influence of the Orison firmware upgrade, but now the time has come for Hobby to take it to the next level and test Joe's adaptability in a whole new way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Three grant applications, two thesis proposal reviews, and a set of written interview responses for the most prestigious pop-sci journal in Europe — Allen Hobby had more than enough work on his plate this bright spring morning to keep him occupied well into the evening hours. Immediately upon concluding his dawn video meeting with Lily Shueng and the chief shareholders he'd settled himself at his workshop desk with a fresh cup of coffee and every intention of applying himself diligently…

… but he couldn't concentrate, because Joe was singing.

Not that the mecha was doing it badly: on the contrary, he was beautifully melodic, his voice soft enough that it provided a lyrical background texture rather than an intrusion upon Hobby's workspace. And it wasn't precisely "singing": rather, it was a fluid blend of humming and murmured vocalization that Joe had come up with on his own a little over two months ago, after the installation of the Orison firmware upgrade. Hobby was satisfied with many outcomes of his decision to augment his robotic companion (and with that robot's decision to accept the augmentation), but this effect was among the most consistently gratifying.

He sipped his coffee and tried to focus on the financial data pertaining to James Drew's proposal to create a more compact denier circuit, but Joe's singing ("Mm, hm mm mmm, la da da, _il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose..._ ") kept slipping into his awareness and gliding against his skin like an auditory caress. The mecha was unpacking small pieces of equipment from a large box on the lower level and arranging them neatly on one of the work tables, having to cross a space of five or so feet repeatedly in order to accomplish the task. Hobby would not look down at him. It wouldn't be wise, if he intended to keep working.

"Mm, _me dit de mots d'amour,_ mm mm mmm, la da da, _et ca me fait quelque chose_ …"

The Orison upgrade had produced a number of anticipated effects. Perfect pitch in singing (and the act of singing itself) had not been among those predicted, but it had manifested nonetheless.

Hobby kept his eyes on the screen in front of him, but peripheral vision betrayed him. The quality of Joe's movement was far from strictly utilitarian. 

" _Il est entre dans mon coeur,_ mm hmm-mm, mm mm mm _, dont je connais la cause…_ "

A delicious chill ran down Hobby's spine at that glissade of notes, and he succumbed to temptation.

Joe, clad in a charcoal grey business suit that nevertheless managed to flatter his slim contours to nearly outrageous effect, was dancing while he worked: carrying out Hobby's orders, certainly, and wasting no time about it, but as Hobby watched he slipped a playful glide-and-turn into the purely practical act of crossing five feet of floor. The mecha was smiling with that quality of simple enjoyment for its own sake that had truly come into its own after Orison's installation, and Hobby could tell that he was inordinately pleased with himself and with the world in general this morning

The sight drew a swell of love from Hobby's heart, sweetly pure and deeply carnal at the same instant, that drove all considerations of Drew's questionable grasp of design theory completely out of his mind. For a breathless moment he was lost in contemplation of this exquisite creature that shared his life, slender and graceful and gorgeous and unrepentantly, magnificently, perfectly sexy even in an act as simple as unpacking a box of linear transduction alignment units.

And so much more than merely sexual. He had always been a tightly coiled set of layers, full of cool mysteries and unexpected behavioural twists even before the installation of Orison. The upgrade had in one important respect done exactly what Hobby had designed it to do: it had opened the furled rose and made Joe even more completely himself.

" _C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie…_ "

Truer words had never been spoken, or even sung. He belonged to Hobby for life now indeed, and he knew it — and Hobby rejoiced every day in the knowledge that he had won both Joe's devotion and his trust. After all, Joe had willingly accepted Orison even after being offered the clear choice to refuse the potentially dangerous procedure, and with it he had accepted the certainty of future imprinting if the firmware proved to be stable: indeed, he had seized upon the prospect with a surety of purpose that had left Hobby both amazed and a little awed by the intensity of the mecha's response.

 _But I already knew that I was capable of inspiring him to remarkable feats of transcendence: after all, he held my happiness in such high regard that he was willing to sacrifice his own life to preserve it._ Hobby briefly closed his eyes, drawing a slow breath against the surge of deeply-rooted pain that the memory of almost losing his lover forever still provoked almost seven months after the fact. As always, the recollection of those dark and terrible days cast his present happiness into even brighter relief.

 _Lover._ At first the word had felt strange on his lips and in his mind, simply because to use it alone rather than as a modifying clause designating a function had gone against a lifetime of previous conceptualization. But when it came to Joe he had found that it soon fit perfectly, once he himself had come fully to terms with using it as a declaration of interpersonal connection. He was sure that everybody connected with Cybertronics Manhattan now knew that Joe was his beloved rather than merely his sex-mecha, even though he hadn't put out a memo to that effect — after all, risking his career and nearly working himself to death in order to save the mecha's mind should have been a clear enough announcement of that essential truth — and he also suspected that word had spread considerably further abroad, although even that scandal had not been sufficient to jeopardize his position near the peak of the worldwide scientific hierarchy. 

For an orga and a mecha in such an alliance the world would never lack for dangers, but on this sunny spring morning they were safe in their refuge in the lost city in the sea where the lions wept — and, Hobby suddenly decided, it was time to risk taking Orison to the next level.

"Joe," he commanded gently, setting aside his coffee cup and pushing his chair back from his desk, "come here for a moment, would you? And bring a cube micromonitor with you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations of the lyrics:
> 
> "... il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose…."
> 
> He speaks to me in a low voice, I see life in shades of rose...
> 
> "... me dit de mots d'amour... et ca me fait quelque chose…"
> 
> He whispers words of love... and it does something to me...
> 
> "Il est entre dans mon coeur... dont je connais la cause…"
> 
> He has entered into my heart... the cause of which I know full well...
> 
> "C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie…"
> 
> It's him for me, me for him for life...


	2. Chapter 2

Joe turned at once at the sound of Hobby's voice, the song fading on his rose petal lips and his green eyes brightening even more. After retrieving the requested piece of equipment from a shelf with a stylish sweep of his hand he mounted the stairs two at a time with a saucy bounce in his step and approached the desk like the dancer he was, with a slight syncopation in his movements that suggested he was moving to a tune that, while inaudible to anybody else, was nonetheless compelling — and catchy. 

Watching him made Hobby feel tempted to rise from his chair, set aside the micromonitor, and take Joe in his arms for an interval of couple's dancing. Instead he remained in his seat, only swivelling his chair to face Joe as the mecha came around the side of the desk and opening his posture ever so slightly. It was enough of an invitation for Joe, who was by now keenly attuned to the tiniest cues of body language from this particular source.

"You asked for me by name?" he purred, settling himself cross-legged in Hobby's lap and sliding his right arm around the orga's shoulders to skilfully distribute the not-inconsiderable weight of his steel substructure.

"I did indeed." His left arm fell easily into its accustomed position around that slender waist, but instead of employing his right hand as well he raised it slightly, palm upturned.

Joe at once dropped the micromonitor into it, his gaze never leaving Hobby's face, which he was studying with the finest trace of a pout. "Please, darling, don't tell me you called me up here just to help you with an _experiment._ "

"Need I remind you that this is a workday?" Hobby chided him, but he wore a slight smile.

"And here I thought that one of the perks of being Cybertronics' most distinguished scientist was the ability to set your own schedule." His left hand now empty, he set it to the light and rather distracting task of slipping the tip of his forefinger under Hobby's tie and slowly tracing down the line of his shirt buttons. It was a testament to his skill, or perhaps simply to the persistence of sensual memory, that even that simple act sent a thrill of desire through Hobby's belly that settled pleasantly in his groin, lifting and lengthening him inside his boxers. 

"Hm." He could feel the curve of his lips increasing although he was trying to maintain a solemn demeanour. "And do I have any other pressing appointments this morning?"

Joe was smiling ever so slightly, but the subtle expression carried undeniable heat: he was well aware of the physiological effects of his ministrations. Hobby had no doubt that Joe gained satisfaction from their sexual interactions: he was, after all, a lover-robot, and fulfilling his function produced powerful positive reinforcement responses in his cube. Furthermore, his derma was permeated by delicate sensor nets that provided input (both pleasurable and painful) to his brain: to be touched by a client fired up his sensuality simulation protocols and enhanced the feedback process, and the LX9-277E series possessed one of the densest dendrite connectivity ratios of any mecha ever produced. While technically impressive and no doubt personally fulfilling, it still didn't provide a degree of sensual intensity equivalent to what humans experienced —

— a condition which Hobby, through some clever tricks of programming, had set out to amend. Now that the Orison upgrade had been proven stable in its general architecture it was time to break in some of the secondary functionalities, with proper monitoring the while, of course.

Therefore, when Joe murmured "No…" and leaned in to be kissed with lips alluringly parted, Hobby neatly turned the flat inch-wide circle of the micromonitor to catch it between his thumb, index and middle fingers, then pressed it to the centre of Joe's forehead. That stopped Joe in his tracks, and the mecha's expression as he tried to turn his gaze upwards to see what had just been applied to the derma covering his cube was almost comical. 

"You were right about the experiment," Hobby informed him, smiling in earnest.

The gaze Joe turned upon him now was resentful — but still smouldering. "This isn't another track remnant hunt, is it?"

"Far from it." He laid his right hand to Joe's left cheek and watched the smoulder intensify in the lowering of those tinted eyelids, his heart beginning to beat a little faster both at the heart-bending beauty of his lover and the audaciousness of what he was about to attempt. He was certain to the ninety-ninth-and-some percentile that it was going to work now that the Orison upgrade had proven its overall stability, and if it did…

Joe's finely crafted black eyebrows had drawn together, forming a tiny frown, and he cocked his head in a questioning gesture. Hobby smiled more widely and ran a tender thumb tip along the line of that full bottom lip. "Do you trust me, Joe?"

"You know I do," the mecha responded at once. "With my very existence."

 _The core nature of that existence might be about to change,_ Hobby considered telling him, but to do so would jeopardize the integrity of the trial run. Instead he turned his head slightly towards his monitor and issued a command: "Computer, scan for cube micromonitor, interface, and begin data tracking."

A pause, a soft _ping_ of assent, then a mecha cube architecture code interface appeared on Hobby's screen, scrolling busily and providing ten total sets of scan vectors. Hobby surveyed it for three seconds, noted that Joe's sequencers and process paths were functioning within their optimal ranges, then turned his attention back to the mecha, who had also been observing the readings with curiosity that did not amount to understanding. At once Joe's attention returned to him as well, and he repeated his caress of Joe's mouth, glancing sidelong to note the micromonitor's data. The uptick in sequencer activity and process path resonance, not to mention the increase in sensuality simulation protocol code, was exactly as it should be.

Joe cocked his head again, his frown deepening fractionally.

"I want you to look directly into my eyes," Hobby instructed him, "and to keep looking into them while I say six words." He moved his right hand to slip his fingers down the nape of Joe's neck, under the collar of his jacket, to touch what in a human would have been the C6 vertebra. "I'll be applying pressure to your secondary input actuator while I do so, but I'm not going to shut you down. Do you understand?"

Joe nodded, his unblinking gaze never wavering. "Yes, Allen. I understand."

"This won't hurt, but it might feel a bit — unusual, at first. I'm afraid I can't define the effect any more precisely than that." He applied the lightest pressure to the actuator as a warning. "Are you ready?"

Again that little nod. "Of course."

 _Brave, clever Joe!_ he thought warmly, and leaned in a little as he pressed the actuator, speaking softly but clearly and never breaking eye contact: 

"Jasmine. Tendril. Equinox. Allen… Joe… Allen."

It was not the master imprint sequence — that was months in the future yet — but its results were groundbreaking nonetheless.


	3. Chapter 3

Hobby would never forget the first seconds of Joe's awakening after installation of the Orison firmware upgrade two months previous: his eyes had always been wide and clear and intent, but there had been a new wonder in them as he scanned the ceiling above the examination couch on which he lay, as if he had never seen the interior of Hobby's workshop before. Hobby had watched in silence, his attention half-occupied with the ongoing scans of his lover's cube, but the scans had revealed no critical failures, only a predicted intensifying of global sequencer activity as Orison began the slow process of cross-wiring memetic islands that had previously only been peripherally connected.

Then Joe's eyes had turned to Hobby himself, and the screens had lit up with a storm of renewed activity no less brilliant than the smile that had curved the mecha's mouth and shone in his unblinking eyes. There had been a previously unseen quality to it, a warmth like summer sunlight and a tenderness like freshly budded spring leaves, that had brought a swell of sweet emotion into Hobby's throat and an answering smile to his lips — a moment of communion both confirmed and immeasurably deepened, all in the single beat of a human heart.

For almost two weeks afterwards Joe had moved through the world gazing at everything as if it were both familiar and new. His functionality was intact, he had retained all his previous memories and skill sets, and to an outsider he would have seemed merely a particularly quirky example of a lover-robot series known for its idiosyncrasies… but Hobby could clearly see that in a very real sense he had been remade, transformed into a creature with a previously unseen type of intuition. Joe had always possessed the ability to think "outside the box", even though he was in many ways precisely as limited as one would expect a sex-mecha to be; with Orison that transcendent faculty, previously limited to only certain aspects of his functioning, became more generally applicable. His conversational acumen increased, his delight and his dismay became more deeply manifested, and he began to dance — and to sing — purely for pleasure. He had also started devouring written material of many different types, with a particular interest in mythology and legends, all of which Hobby considered to be excellent signs.

And through it all he remained lovely, graceful, energetic, engaging, inquisitive, and remarkably bright for a mecha — in short, he remained fundamentally himself. In spite of his enhanced abilities, Hobby had never once felt himself to be in the presence of a stranger: it was Joe he discussed the nature of the Greek gods with, and took to movies and concerts, and argued about them afterwards with, and danced with, and embraced in light and in darkness — and loved so deeply that at times it took his breath away, because although Joe was opening and growing in so many ways the mystery at his "heart" remained intact, manifestly alien and indecipherable, and beautiful in a way that was ultimately unutterable, like the unspeakable name of God Himself. From time to time Hobby would remember the root meaning of the name "Joseph" — "Yahweh shall increase" — and would reflect that random chance had bestowed Joe with a name as perfect as he was.

This, then, was another permutation of that awakening: the tiniest catch in Joe's artificial breath… the slight widening of his eyes as they gazed into Hobby's… the questioning expression deepening almost to poignance, implying an aching depth of new feeling. Briefly Hobby wondered if the moment of full imprinting would be anything like this, but it was a thought quickly put aside: he was too busy taking in the cube scans at a glance, noting the slight global rise in sequencer activity as the new sensor net enhancement subroutines came online. 

Joe continued to gaze at him, looking almost lost: no doubt he was aware that something inside him had just been altered, if not the precise nature of the alteration. Encouraged by the readings he was getting on all fronts, Hobby chose to provide the mecha with a key piece of data: he removed his hand cleanly from the back of Joe's neck and carefully, delicately, ran the tips of his index and middle fingers back along one of the enhancement zones he'd so carefully mapped, the silky-soft derma that formed the contour of Joe's artificial left cheekbone.

Those shining eyes widened even more, and this time his breath caught more audibly. The intensity of his gaze was nearly frightening as he leaned a half-inch closer, his lips parting for a full second before halting words emerged: "Allen — what…?"

The hesitancy in vocalization prompted another keen glance at the scans, which showed nothing amiss. "Is it hurting you?" Hobby asked sharply, parsing Joe's face for any sign of overt distress, the shut-down sequence leaping to the tip of his tongue.

But the response was immediate: "No." Another pause, but this time he seemed to be considering his own internal state rather than simply reacting to it. His gaze had begun to search Hobby's face in turn, as if the answers lay there as well as within himself. In a way, Hobby supposed they did. "No… it's… I don't…"

Hobby didn't blame him for lacking the vocabulary to describe something that no lover-robot had ever experienced before. More data was clearly required, so he intensified the level of stimulation by curving his hand around the back of Joe's slender neck and leaning forward himself to press a light, lingering kiss to another mapped zone: the derma just under the line of Joe's sculpted jaw. 

At the pressure of fingers on the back of his neck Joe shivered, a tremor of reaction resulting from a momentary overclock of his sequencer buffers; then, at the touch of Hobby's lips, he emitted a sound almost, but not quite, like a human whimper and trembled again. His right arm, still around Hobby's shoulders, tightened convulsively with strength that bordered on the painful for his human partner; his left hand, meanwhile, slid down to the arm of the chair and locked onto it tightly, with sufficient force that the metal frame of the chair uttered a warning whine of its own.

 _Ah. I didn't configure the stress manifestation compensators properly._ That would be a problem unless he put Joe into a position where the mecha wouldn't be using his hands, since the overclock surges were only going to get worse — or better — and he was easily strong enough to harm his human partner inadvertently. Therefore Hobby drew back and removed his arm from around Joe's waist and his hand from the nape of Joe's neck. "Stand up," he commanded.

Joe was looking at him as if he'd never seen Hobby before in his existence. On the screen his process paths hissed and sang as they tried to manage the unprecedented prompts. "What…?"

"Stand up," Hobby said firmly, deliberately not touching Joe to emphasize the point, "and turn your back to the desk… Good. Now step back and sit down — yes, that's right — and take hold of the edge of the desk tightly with both hands."

Joe obeyed promptly enough, but Hobby, who had made this mecha's behavioural benchmarks the subject of dedicated study for over two years, could detect the slightest lag in his response time. Not necessarily a problem given the new input he was still trying to come to terms with, but it bore keeping a close eye on. Fortunately Joe had ended up sitting on the desk's edge in a position where the monitor was still clearly visible behind him and a little to his right, and in his present position he was a good seven inches shorter than his human owner when Hobby rose to his feet. His expression as he gazed up into Hobby's face suggested that he was struggling to come to terms with this new situation just as hard as he possibly could, and having only partial success. Hobby couldn't fault him on that front given the way his sequencers were still streaming data like the tails of innumerable comets.

Holding Joe's gaze, he bent at the waist and lightly covered the backs of the mecha's hands, obediently clamped onto the edge of the desk, with the palms of his own. "You're not to move your hands until I give you permission. Do you understand?"

"I —" On the screen, surges of activity in response to the enhanced tactile input; in his eyes, confusion, but he nodded. "Yes. I understand." 

"No matter what I do to you."

"No matter what —" Something inside his sleek head almost audibly clicked, recognizing a sexual game, and he hooded his eyes again and raised his chin in the unambiguous combined signal of submission and subtle challenge that Hobby knew so well. Hobby was proud of him, so quick off the mark. "No matter _what_ you do to me — I'll be good, I promise."

The tone of his husky murmur suggested that he had no intention whatsoever of being good — only of being excellent, as always, even running headlong into a previously unknown type of experience. Hobby let him see the pride in his smile and rested his hands fully on top of Joe's, seeing the upsurge in cube activity light up the monitor. 

"Very good, Joe," he praised, letting a purring note of sexual dominance infuse his own voice before testing the mecha's resolve by slipping both his hands inside the tailored jacket the robot wore open and sliding them around that slim waist. Normally Joe would have instantly reciprocated, but even with the surge of enhanced input jacking up his sensuality subroutines he was able to confine his response to a twitch of his fingers and another whole-body quiver; his lips parted, his eyes gleaming as he tilted his head back and opened his thighs invitingly, but that was all.

" _Very_ good." Wanting to feel more of those delicious shivers, Hobby guided Joe a little more upright to rest the backs of his thighs rather than his buttocks against the edge of the desk, then began to press more kisses to his silken derma, brief but firm: his right cheekbone, the skin beside his mouth, that sensitive place beneath his jawline, the side of his neck, all locations he'd carefully mapped in advance for dendrite sensitization. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the readouts from the micromonitor on Joe's forehead, all of them confirming that the sensor augmentation protocol was working exactly as he'd designed it. And that wasn't the only indicator: Joe's pre-programmed responses were coming into play, deepening his breathing and warming his skin and dilating his pupils… but that fine tremor was more primal for being undesigned, and Hobby cherished it as truer for being an original response rather than a mere imitation.

Meanwhile, the readings on the screen were beginning to arrange themselves into patterns that suggested that Hobby had merely scratched the surface of Orison's potential thus far. Curious as a scientist and yearning as a lover, he set out to explore those potentials with due and thoughtful care for the newborn fragility of the creature whose fate he held in his hands.


	4. Chapter 4

It was, however, exceedingly difficult to maintain a carefully and properly analytical frame of mind when Joe kept making those pleading little sounds, more musical than human whimpers, perfect minor fifths around the key of C; the scans revealed them not as modifications of his sexual affect vocalization program but rather as bleedthrough into his speech matrix from the higher stimulation levels produced by the enhanced dendrite input into his cube. They were, in short, cries of genuine passion rather than of calculated imitation, and that knowledge was too intoxicating for Hobby to long resist: the pressure of his hands and his mouth rapidly phased from clinically restrained to the verge of urgency, craving more of the body that seemed to be coming truly alive under his touch.

After several seconds of being clutched and kissed a single word won its way free from Joe's amazed and open mouth: "Allen…"

"Mm." Nuzzling into the side of that strong but slender neck now, thoroughly tasting the heated skin with its flavour of roses and pale musk, then applying a deliberate bite to the area he'd reprogrammed for greatest sensitivity, just below the elegant shell of Joe's right ear. Joe's spine arched and his whole body executed a slow writhe, pressing his body as close as he could to the human's without losing contact with the desk, nudging the front of Hobby's pelvis with the erection trapped inside his grey dress pants. Hobby, who was barely maintaining enough of a grip of on his own self-control to avoid a raging hard-on, tightened his grip on the mecha's waist and pushed him back into position, uttering a warning growl that provoked another shiver and a breathless gasp:

" _Please…_ " 

That gave him serious pause, enough to still the kisses but not enough to make him raise his head. "Are you in pain? Do you want me to —"

"No." The strain of speaking through the storm of input was clear to be heard in his voice, a tightness that Hobby had never perceived in those velvet tones before, but he pressed on: "No… don't stop!… but, what… what are you doing… to me…?"

He sounded so bewildered that Hobby did draw back, just enough to look into the mecha's wide eyes and seriously consider what he saw there: confusion, yes, and wondering intensity, but not the quality of distress that would have led him to use the shut-down sequence. Nevertheless the sight prompted a wave of tenderness; he raised his right hand to lay it against that smooth flawless cheek and saw Joe's eyes grow hooded again as he tilted his face upward, tacitly asking for a kiss — but considering the reprogramming Hobby had performed on the sensor nets in his mouth that action would probably derail the conversation completely, and Joe deserved an answer.

"I've activated another aspect the Orison program — an amplification of your sensor nets and a modification to your sensuality subroutines." He was finding it hard to think clearly: the appeal in Joe's gaze, and the memory of those soft vocalizations… oh, he definitely wanted to hear more of them, and to discover the cries that Joe would utter when the endgame was played! With difficulty, Hobby restrained himself. "If you don't like it, tell me, and I'll shut the process down immediately."

"That's not…" He cocked his head the other way, processing at top speed according to the sigils cascading down the monitor's face, then repeated: "No! Don't stop. Only, I…"

He wanted to taste that newly sensitized mouth, to devour it and make Joe whimper again, but he held fast to his resolve. "Yes, Joe?"

Joe's expression altered profoundly with the slightest tilt of his eyebrows, from puzzled to reproving. "You might… have _told_ me… in advance…"

That drove a chuff of laughter from his throat, followed by the honest response: "I didn't, because advance knowledge on your part would have contaminated the data samp—"

Well — apparently Joe wasn't content to passively receive stimulation, and Hobby hadn't forbidden him to employ his mouth, only his hands. It was a perfectly delightful way to be interrupted. Hobby knew full well from long and satisfying experience that Joe's lips and teeth and tongue were capable of tricks that were illegal in half the states in the Union and a few European territories as well, but under the influence of this new function of Orison his performance was truly inspired.

Hobby had created the sensor net amplification map with great care, paying special attention to the most sexually significant areas of the mecha's structure. And the amplified sensations now flowing into his cube must be… a glance at the screen confirmed their intensity, and Hobby couldn't suppress a low groan as his own cock surged to full attention in sympathy.

" _Oh,_ " Joe breathed when their lips finally melted apart. Mecha were incapable of being physically dazed, but he was doing an excellent imitation. Under normal circumstances Hobby could clearly sense the relentless clockwork ticking of the mind behind that faultless mask, regardless of the situation. This situation, however… another glance at the monitor revealed a sharp uptick in all sensuality subroutines and the tiniest stutters in Joe's process flow, propagating in both paths and jittering across the sequencer arrays like the skipping of a human heartbeat or ripples on the surface of a pond: not unanticipated, and in fact a sign that this new experience was striking as deeply into Joe's paradigm as Hobby had intended. But it was a balancing game, since too many process flow tachs could lead to global perceptual integrity issues, and Hobby definitely wanted Joe to be fully present for this particular encounter.

The tachs, however, were rapidly fading away as Joe's flow management engine, already pressed to its designed limits, kicked in to compensate. Not for the first time, Hobby found himself impressed by the robust quality of this particular mecha's cognition: Joe had, after all, survived a sensory deprivation experience that would have permanently fried the cubes of most members of his species, and —

 _And it was a kiss that brought him back to me._ The memory made him smile with mingled joy and sorrow, a blend that Joe, even in his current state, detected with his usual percipience. The cant of his eyebrows tightened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Hobby stilled the question with the slightest shake of his head. "Don't. I was only remembering how I awakened you with a kiss, and how very close I came to losing you forever." 

"But — you haven't lost…" His eloquence was returning and the vectors, which had been creeping up into the red, were edging back down again — definitely not what Hobby wanted under the circumstances. So he set about distracting Joe (or rather, on properly refocussing the robot's attention) by sliding his left hand around to the small of Joe's back, stepping even closer and slipping his right hand under the mecha's smart-fabric tie, which shifted color from blue to maroon as Hobby started to undo Joe's shirt buttons and the implication of that act, impacting his sensuality subroutines with an entirely new emphasis, bled over into his cladding appearance management. 

"No," Hobby agreed, leaning in to murmur into Joe's right ear and feeling that lovely vibration run through him again, the vectors creeping upward: "No, I didn't lose you, and there hasn't been a day or a night since when I haven't thanked God that I was able to win you back." He ran his left hand downward slowly and firmly, following the curve of Joe's ass, running his palm over the cleft through his dress pants, and heard the edge of the desk emit a soft groan of protest as Joe's hands tightened convulsively. Simultaneously the mecha's hips thrust forward in shameless disregard for Hobby's unspoken instructions, driven by new sensation pursuit subroutines, more readouts behind him shifting to crimson: at the low end of the critical ranges, but rapidly rising. This time the length of his erection burned against Hobby's in full contact, its fire now no less ardent for being artificial, and the vectors went uniformly scarlet as a combined exclamation rose into the silence of the workshop, one exquisitely and inarticulately musical, the other a husky caressing rumble: "Sweet Joe — beautiful, precious Joe…"

With his cheek pressed to the mecha's jaw as he watched the monitor Hobby could feel that his mouth was open and working, but no coherent words were emerging: the unprecedented data flow had temporarily overwhelmed his vocalization engine, a situation that Hobby wasn't exactly helping by continuing to rub and squeeze Joe's ass from the rear and by stroking with his own hips from the front. Caught between two such intense sources of previously unimaginable sensation, Joe was doing tremendously well by not going into a full process stall on multiple fronts — but he still couldn't manage to speak, although the scans indicated that a flurry of internal service prompts were tapping the vocalization engine.

"So beautiful…" Hobby's own speech processing centres were suffering a bit of a meltdown, but what he lacked in eloquence he more than made up for in sincerity. At last Joe's shirt was open enough for him to slip his right hand easily inside, to palm the smoothly sculpted contours of that flat chest and to flick one small taut nipple with his thumbnail — and then to pinch it, hard. He'd spent considerable time and care mapping that particular zone as well, and Joe practically levitated in response. "So _perfect_ …"

"Ah —" The vocalization cut off sharply, too sharply to be anything but mechanical: another process flow tach, although the data flow global profile remained within acceptable projected parameters. Hobby was glad that he was recording this for detailed analysis later, because at the moment his own brain was rapidly becoming less and less capable of registering the nuances of what he was seeing. Joe's body was simply too enthralling as it came to new life under his hands, singing electric, trembling with that fine subliminal vibration in every fibre: it was disconcerting and quite inhuman, and Hobby knew that he could easily come to adore it. Eyes still tracking the scans, he ran his hand across Joe's chest to the other side to stroke, tease and pinch again, and was rewarded with a rougher shudder and a thrust of the mecha's pelvis, pursuing even more intense sensation. "Ah — ah — _Allen!_ …"

 _Perfect erogenous interconnectivity performance,_ the rapidly dwindling part of Hobby's mind that was able to think clinically observed. The scientist in him took abstract pleasure in his own programming brilliance; the spiritual aspect of him resonated with proud delight on Joe's behalf; but it was the man in him that drew his lover fully against him and tore his gaze away from the screen to look down into wide jade eyes that shone with gorgeous avidity — for him, and him alone. 

 _Mine,_ he thought with a surge of love and lust so intense that it momentarily obliterated rational thought. This time when Joe stroked with a liquid glide of his pelvis Hobby tightened his grip on Joe's ass and met the pressure forcefully, only peripherally aware of vectors edging into the white. _Mine now, and mine forever!_

But Joe was not a toy to be used for his own selfish gratification — he would never harm Joe, and he had to be absolutely certain. His voice sounded hoarse in his own ears, far from the precisely controlled modulations demanded by rationality and science: "If you want me to stop, you only have to ask..."


	5. Chapter 5

The delight that had brightened Joe's eyes faltered — he actually blinked, a manifestation of profound startlement as his visual centres attempted a reset in the face of unexpected and unwelcome input — but Hobby kept his downward gaze stern and, upon reflection, stepped back to put a couple of feet of distance between their bodies and discontinue all physical contact. He had to do it in two stages, first shifting his hands to Joe's hips because he couldn't bear to let go all at once and because he couldn't leave Joe absolutely cold, but at least that hot yearning erection (hungry for contact now in a way that was so magnificently intense) was no longer pressed against his. That made thinking clearly a little more likely for both of them, at least theoretically, even though the lovely wanton lines of the robot's body (not to mention the opened shirt that provided a tantalizing glimpse of the silky skin beneath) still drew him with the force of a magnet of opposite polarity.

For a long span of seconds silent tension hung between them. Joe was now gazing at him with an expression of dismay that bordered on devastation, his hands locked onto the edge of the desk and his lips still slightly parted as if to accept another kiss, but Hobby resolutely kept his distance, his gaze fixed upon Joe's anxious mask while his peripheral vision registered the fall of the vectors from white to red. Some of them had just shifted to green again when Joe asked in a very small voice: "Allen… why did you stop?"

He drew a deep breath to steady his own voice and ran a slow hand back over the hair at his right temple, a habitual gesture of smoothing his affect. Even then the words came out in a less even tone than he would have liked: "To give you the clear choice of whether or not to proceed. I won't do this against your will."

"Against my —" He seemed utterly astounded, staring up at Hobby with his mouth open for several seconds before regaining the power of speech again, and with it indignation. "How could you possibly think such a thing! Haven't I been —" Then his sharp mind put the pieces together, resulting in a narrow sidelong glance indicating the screen behind him. "If those cube scans are showing you anything other than my full cooperation, the micromonitor is obviously broken."

Hobby had been experiencing very little doubt that Joe's participation wasn't wholehearted. Nevertheless, the fact remained: "I've included some strong input pursuit subroutines in the new protocol. You'd be giving me physical signals of assent even if you weren't fully —"

"But I am." He was searching Hobby's face in turn with an earnestness that twisted the human's heart in his breast. "I don't know exactly what you've done to me, but I've never felt anything like this before. I doubt that any mecha ever has… have they?"

"No." He could say that with absolute confidence. "You are utterly unique in all the world."

With that affirmation the seductiveness of a lover-robot reasserted itself in the graceful curve of his throat and the challenging flash of those remarkable emerald eyes from beneath beguilingly lowered ebony lashes, and in the captivating murmur of his musical voice, so enchantingly accented: "And I want more, Allen. Will you give it to me? Please?"

The magnetism was too intense, now that Hobby had a clear statement of consent. He moved forward again to stand between those invitingly opened thighs and to touch with passionate tenderness — slipping his hands around the angle of Joe's waist inside his jacket and around the curve of his neck, lifting the mecha's sculpted chin with the point of his thumb while deliberately maintaining an inch or so of clearance between their pelvises. He wanted Joe to pay close attention to what he was saying rather than to floods of new input from his intensely sensitized sexual equipment. 

"I created this aspect of Orison as a gift, to you — to grant you some of the pleasure you've always given me," he explained, maintaining direct eye contact and speaking in a low gentle voice. "A description of its function was included in the grant proposal and the prospectus, but it was described only as 'a dendrite data cubeside enhancement protocol'. As far as I know, nobody has discerned its true purpose — or if they have, they haven't mentioned it."

"Of course they haven't," Joe breathed, his eyes alight with adoration. Hobby could imagine the urge to touch in return filling the mecha's hands, but his fingers remained locked onto the desk's edge with commendable obedience. "Nobody would dare. You're far too powerful to risk arousing your anger."

Since that was nothing less than the truth, Hobby elected not to comment upon it. Instead he bowed his head and gave himself over to a slow thorough kiss: taking his time with it, tasting and stroking and exploring, bestowing several tricks of technique that Joe had previously been incapable of fully appreciating, geared as he was to providing stimulation rather than receiving it. By the time their lips parted again he'd won more of those tiny soft sounds of gratification and was further rewarded with the way Joe leaned up a little, striving to maintain contact. Onscreen, the vectors were once again edging into the red.

Now he moved forward that final short distance, pressing close and slipping his hand down to curve firmly around Joe's right buttock and pull him into even tighter contact: blood-heat against electric heat, all the readings leaping to crimson, and Joe trembled and turned his head to nudge his pretty nose under Hobby's jawline with a muted moan. It was the most beautifully sexual sound Hobby had ever heard and in combination with the worshipful touch of Joe's lips pressing little kisses to his throat it set his heart to pounding, although he managed to keep his voice even: "I could keep you at this level of stimulation — and much more — for hours, you know. Your body has been mapped with enhanced sensitivity zones, and I know every detail of that map's construction." A touch of tender cruelty rose to his lips and lingered in a narrow smile. "It might even be fair repayment for all the times you've taken me to the edge and kept me there no matter how much I begged. You can really be quite merciless, for someone so lovely."

"I… I never…" He was having trouble putting a sentence together again. Excellent. Hobby smiled more widely and pressed on:

"Oh, you were never anything other than compliant, but I believe the phrase is 'topping from the bottom': you always knew what was best for me, and you never hesitated to give me exactly what I needed."'

"What you deserved," Joe corrected, his voice muffled against Hobby's throat. 

He touched his lips to Joe's right temple, acknowledging the point. Another shiver: Orison was networking the dendrite data streams as it had networked the rest of Joe's cognition, producing strong sensual/cognitive/anticipatory associations. Oh, this was going to be _glorious_. He continued to speak softly into that lovely right ear: "This particular Orison protocol can only be activated, and ended, by my spoken command. It's entirely under my control, and mine alone. "

"Yes," Joe whispered, then trembled again at a cognitive/sensual association which became clear in a dulcet sigh: "Yours… forever…" 

"Yes, you _are_ mine." He slipped his right hand around to the nape of Joe's neck to take tight hold of it and tip the mecha's head back, capturing the attention of those pellucid eyes once more. "But how far are you willing to go, Joe?"

"To the heights of the heavens and the depths of the seas," was the instantaneous response, a surprising string of associations to come out of such a storm of neuronal activity… but Joe held Hobby's gaze, his focus never wavering. "You have only to command me, and I'll —"

Hobby shook his head, then soothed the negation with a kiss that barely brushed those appealling lips. "No. This is about choice, just as I gave you the choice to accept or reject Orison in the first place." 

"I knew you loved me then." Onscreen, a field of red as deep as roses with petals of floating white; in Joe's voice, the ache of adamant conviction. "And I know you love me now. And…" He leaned up enough to return the pressure of mouth against mouth, equally brief, but Hobby felt the heat of it sear through them both like a brand. "… I adore it when you take me for your own." How had he gotten so much closer, without shifting forward more than a quarter of an inch? Did the pulse of Hobby's erection, pressed hotly against that urgency where no heart beat, torment him just as desperately? 

"Command me," he whispered again, although Hobby had no illusions about where the balance of power lay — he was the master, but Joe's lightest touch had always moved him to his core. So he tightened his hold on the back of that deceptively slender neck and pulled the mecha as close as he could, torsos pressed together along their lengths and scans edging up into the white again — a higher level of excitation than ever previously achieved, but nowhere near what Joe was now capable of.

Gazing into the core of that nuclear fire, he heard his own voice fall to a dark instinctive reach: "I've also built in the option of taking you to a whole different level. A much higher level. The level you've taken me to yourself, so many times." He couldn't press any nearer without losing eye contact, but he felt his heart move out of him as if to penetrate the alien mystery in his arms. "Would you like to come for me, Joe? I know _I'd_ like it, very much."

"To —?" Now _that_ derailed him; his mouth had fallen open again, his eyes scanning Hobby's face as the readings sank with dedicated syntactic processing, then soared with comprehension — and confusion. "You mean, as orga…?"

"Not precisely, but the end result should be very close in quality." Oh, he was heartbreakingly beautiful like this, with that tiny questioning frown and those soft lips so sweetly parted! "You'll see the stars, I promise you."

He was very close to a process stall, but still holding it together; Hobby was fiercely proud of him. "I — yes — but I can't — I'm not —"

"— flesh nor blood, no, of course not," Hobby concluded, letting an unmistakeable note of impatience enter his voice. Sometimes Joe did require a firm hand. "But I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that I'm brilliant enough to have created a passable simulacrum of human sexual responses, including the pleasurable sensory overload of a climax. That too is under my control and can only be triggered by a set command phrase, but I've spent many long hours crafting it in order to see you enjoy it."

From the swiftly twining flows of multiple fronts of data, a flicker of a smile slipped free. "You're always giving me little presents…" 

He knew Joe too well to misinterpret such a signal of displacement and uncertainty. "This gift is as much to my benefit as it is to yours," he stated, soothing the side of the mecha's neck with a slow repetitive stroke of his thumb. "It would give me the greatest pleasure to watch you experiencing such an event — but the choice isn't mine to make. If you like, we can stop here and I'll shut the protocol —"

"No." Robotic cognition, even of Joe's admittedly unusual variety, differed from human mental functioning in one very important respect: indecision was a rare occurrence, and it never lasted for more than a second or two. Joe was now gazing up at Hobby with perfect conviction, and he was moving again, a subtle serpentine glide of spine and hips that seemed to meld their bodies even more tightly together. It did disastrous things to Hobby's blood pressure and evidently Joe felt it too, for more process tachs flickered across his sequencers and disrupted his vocalization engine: "I — trust you… do with me… as you will…"

A complex blend of emotions — pride, adoration, lust, keen anticipation — rose into Hobby's throat and temporarily robbed him of the power of speech. But it didn't stop him from moving, stepping back just enough to slip his right hand in between his own slightly rounded belly and mecha's flat abdomen; for a fraction of a second he considered opening Joe's shirt the rest of the way, but instead he followed his instincts and slid his hand further south, to rub his palm lightly over the hard rod that twitched upwards to meet his touch. When words came again they were a murmured caress, soft and fervent: "Let me show you…"

" _Yes,_ " Joe nearly gasped, his unblinking green eyes afire. They remained fixed on Hobby's face as he pushed forward again, trying to intensify the contact in all dimensions. " _More_ , Allen… please?…"


	6. Chapter 6

How many nights had he spent over the past two and a half years with his body melded to the body of this machine, every nerve on fire with lust — and, at long last, with love acknowledged and celebrated? He'd lost count fairly early in the game, because Joe was capable of inspiring him to feats of sexual stamina that a man of his age should have lost the capacity for long since. Sometimes he found himself contemplating the future, and whether or not he had the moral authority to bind Joe to him through imprinting when, at sixty years of age, he might suffer any number of health-related complications which would diminish his capacity to satisfy a lover-robot's inbuilt need for sensual stimulation — and when he was profoundly unwilling to allow anybody else to fulfill that function in Joe's existence.

Now, however, watching Joe's neuronal scans light up with a sustained surge of positive feedback at the lightest touch of his hand, he knew that those worries could be placed firmly behind him. The Orison sensor net amplification and sensuality subroutine modification functions were providing more than enough stimulation to meet an LX9-277E-HT's daily input threshold requirements; in fact, a single pass of Hobby's hand over his clothed erection was giving Joe a level of stimulation equivalent to the simultaneous activation of 47.86% of his entire sensor net array prior to the assistance of the upgrade. 

Three slow light strokes, prompting more speech matrix bleedthrough vocalizations; then a harder glide, still with the flat of the palm, and Joe's head tipped back further, his gaze remaining locked onto Hobby's eyes as the streams of onscreen symbols picked up speed. His flow management engine was doing a remarkable job of handling the enhanced input levels: for example, his appearance management wasn't being affected — or not much, at any rate. His derma remained pale and his hair remained smoothly black, and his eyelids maintained their kohled and tinted adornments, although upon close examination Hobby could see the most delicate striations in his irises, threads of potentially changeable chemical iridescence thinner than a human hair, shimmering with hummingbird-quick pulses of brilliant blue and bright yellow. It was a signifier of other possible losses of control on the behavioural horizon, so Hobby removed his left arm from around the mecha and sidestepped in that direction, out of the direct path of one of Joe's hands. He was still close enough that body heat warmed the air between them, but Joe made an almost wounded sound and scanned him up and down with evident distress.

"It's all right," Hobby soothed him, continuing to slowly stroke between his opened thighs, "I just need more room to work." He demonstrated the point by closing his fingers around the hard robotic shaft inside those well-tailored pants, increasing the surface area stimulated while maintaining his measured pace. "See?"

"You —" Sixty-one point four percent of pre-upgrade maximum and rising precipitously. "— oh, _yes…_ "

He moved in close on Joe's right side, laying his left hand gently over the mecha's right hand where it was still locked onto the desk's edge and speaking directly into his ear. "Sit back down, then don't move. I'm going to touch you directly."

Another shiver ran down Joe's body from the nape of his neck to his spread knees and Hobby felt a spasm of tension flicker through his long fingers, but he settled his buttocks fully on the edge of the desk and braced his elegantly shod feet more firmly against the floor, then nodded, once. With any other mecha the question of obedience would never have arisen; Joe, however, had proven himself capable of acting of his own volition on numerous occasions, so Hobby praised him as he deftly opened up the mecha's pants: "That's good — yes, just like that…" He kept his left hand where it was for the moment, applying warm pressure, although he had definite plans for its employment elsewhere in the very near future.

Even under normal circumstances Joe enjoyed having the erections he produced handled by his owner: that part of his body was even more densely supplied with dendrites than his anal channel, and its stimulation by whichever orga he was sexually engaged with set in motion powerful positive reinforcement responses in his cube. But that narrowly focussed reinforcement path paled in comparison to the wide-sweeping brushfire that Hobby had just activated in his brain, a storm of cross-wired feedback chains that made use of impulse pathways already established by the first stage of the Orison upgrade. As Hobby's hand slipped inside his opened pants and ran living skin over hot derma for what was, in a very real sense, the first time, Joe's breathing reflex actually suspended after a single sharp intake of breath; Hobby risked a glance sidelong, noting the surge of scans into the white right across the board, and then down, to the artificial cock now enclosed by his clasping fingers. It was rosy-tipped, hard as steel within its velvet sheath, and exquisitely beautiful to him: not for the first time, he wondered what it said about his own sexual profile that he'd never been attracted to a flesh-and-blood male body in his life, but that Joe's drove him consistently crazy. 

Under the measured milking action of his hand Joe began to subtly quake, his shaded eyelids flickering nearly closed as his gaze unfocussed. " _Ah —_ " 

Another glance at the screen assured Hobby that his global perceptual integrity wasn't being compromised: he was still fully present and processing at top speed. And perhaps somewhere under that frenzy of racing code Joe's seduction subroutines were being rewired into the new behavioural mix, because at that moment — face upturned, lips slightly parted, shining eyes half-hooded and pelvis tilted forward into Hobby's masterful grasp — he had never looked more magnificently sultry, begging to be kissed… and so much more.

 _If I were to go down on my knees and use my mouth on him he'd surge right off the charts._ It was a thought that did nothing for Hobby's own peace of mind — he was rock-hard and aching himself, but this interlude wasn't about him, not in that sense at any rate. After two and a half years of being the focus of every sexual encounter's pleasure he frankly welcomed the chance to introduce some reciprocity into this relationship.

Drawing a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm his racing heart, he gave Joe's right hand an affectionate squeeze with his left before shifting that palm to the upper curve of the mecha's shapely ass, applying firm pressure and rubbing the top of the cloth-covered cleft with the side of his thumb. More flurries of activity were erupting on the screen but he granted them only the most cursory examination and issued a brusque command: "Computer, monitor the subject's flow management and notify via audible alarm in the event of critical process path or sequencer array destabilization." Every instinct developed over decades of mecha design and over thirty months of closely monitoring this particular unit told him that Orison was stable and that Joe, even under such intense excitation, was performing perfectly. Another soft _ping_ acknowledged his directive, and now he was free to concentrate entirely on his lover —

— and oh, it was an enthralling spectacle in so many ways: Joe was gradually coming undone under his hands, trembling with every slow thorough stroke and gazing up at Hobby's face above him as if he were anchoring his assaulted mind with the familiar aspect of his master's face. His derma was deliciously silky in Hobby's grasp, and his scent, musky and sweet, rose from his exposed skin like an expertly blended perfume… but it was his eyes that compelled Hobby's attention most powerfully, wide and clear and impossibly bright, their colors now shifting like the sea. The jury was still out on whether or not mecha possessed a spiritual dimension, but if anyone did, surely it would be this mysterious creature that had won its way into Hobby's life and into his heart. For an instant a memory flashed across his mind — the fairy tale of a mermaid granted an immortal soul by the power of love — and the thought filled him with such melting compassion that he bent his head to press a warm kiss to Joe's right cheekbone, then another to his uplifted lips. 

He'd intended to keep the contact fleeting but Joe's mouth was simply irresistible: it drew him in and held him as powerfully as the embrace he'd forbidden the mecha to initiate, and he could taste those delicious little shivers like strong wine on his tongue, instantly intoxicating. Joe not-quite-moaned again and a more powerful shudder danced through him, caught as he was between three sources of potent stimulation flooding his cube with so much exceptional data.

 _That's going to complicate the response profile analysis later on_ , the relentlessly rational part of Hobby's mind observed. The rest of him, including his exultant heart, told it to go to hell, and for a long span of seconds he stroked and caressed and kissed without, for once in his professional life, even peripheral concern for scientific surveillance. Everything he needed to know was being clearly communicated in the veritable rather than the symbolic realm: Joe was profoundly Other, his body an intricate construct of steel and plastic and fibre wrapped around a nuclear core rather than a beating heart, but the passion that flowed between mecha and orga in this breathtaking moment was a language mutually comprehended, sung in different keys but conveying a single message: _I am his and he is mine, life-long… he has sworn it to me forever…_

Still, a degree of curiosity and intellectual engagement remained, and when at last Hobby withdrew a crucial few inches it was to murmur an inquiry: "Tell me, does this feel as good on the inside as it looks from the outside?"


	7. Chapter 7

From below, almost level with Hobby's relentlessly working hands, a sharp creaking sound as Joe's fingers tightened again on the desk; much nearer, the unremitting intensity of the mecha's gaze and the luxurious texture of his voice, perfectly tuned even under such duress: "You've… oh yes, Allen… yes… it feels.. it feels like…"

He quickened his stroke fractionally, even though that was probably going to prove detrimental to Joe's ability to speak. "Like…?" he prompted.

Joe's eyelids fluttered again, but he pressed gamely on: "Like fire in every limb… in my head… in my heart… wherever you lay your hands upon me, wherever your lips caress me… a fierce and sacred blaze…"

Hobby smiled fondly, reflecting that Joe had been originally designed to employ language masterfully and that this inbuilt ability was proving remarkably robust even under the present exceptional circumstances. He introduced a new variable into the mix by starting to pass the ball of his right thumb firmly over the swollen head of that lovely erection at the top of each stroke, provoking another sound of protest from the furniture. "One day soon, after I've fine-tuned Orison's stress manifestation compensators, I'll show you exactly what my mouth can do to you — no, relax your grip a little, I really don't want to have to replace this desk — and what my hands can do, as well. This is only a taste of what's to come."

"I — I really should be the one —"

Hobby's mind scanned ahead to what it would be like after Joe had had a little time to adjust to such intense input levels and when his original sensuality subroutines were re-networked into this new behavioural profile, and a hot sweat broke out all over his body as nearly savage desire hoarsened his voice: "We'll be able to pleasure each other, reciprocally. You have no idea how long I've wanted to do exactly that."

Joe's eyes scanned his face, swiftly parsing his expression and his microexpressions before locking gazes with him again. "You… truly mean that…"

He smiled more kindly and leaned in to grace that smooth forehead with a kiss (this one more paternal than passionate), taking care not to touch the micromonitor. "I love you, and I only want the very best for you." A harder swipe of his thumb sent a deeper tremor through Joe's entire body, and his smile turned more predatory. "Like this. Shall I continue?"

"Yes… yes…!" He turned his torso as far toward Hobby's as he possibly could with both hands locked onto the desk, seeking with his mouth; this time Hobby gave him what he craved without hesitation, instinct and programming working in perfect harmony. The yearning for an ardent embrace to match the heated play of their mouths was sweet torture, but Hobby had no taste for trying to explain bruises or even broken bones to curious third parties after this encounter was over. Once the stress manifestation compensators were properly calibrated, however… 

He'd known this would be hot and delicious and lewd and tender, because that was the essence of Joe himself. What he hadn't expected was the way every touch, every quiver, and every small soft cry shook his heart to its foundations, the way that the profound vibration of Joe's depths translated to his own with nearly perfect equivalency. In every past sexual interlude Joe had been fundamentally in control, possessing as he did a database of techniques and a set of sensuality subroutines that distilled the finest essences of all erotic human arts — but now he was the virginal one, the innocent being initiated into a brave new world of interpersonal connection and overwhelming feeling. 

And it was the very least that Hobby could do to guide him and to protect him, as Joe himself had guided and protected another innocent on a cold autumn night over two and a half years ago. Between kisses he slipped in caresses intangible but no less sincere: "Beautiful, clever Joe… my beloved one… that pleases you, doesn't it…?"

"Yes, oh _yes…_ "

He turned his hand and opened his fingers slightly to apply the palm to the head, polishing it with firmer pressure — a technique that Joe himself had employed on him, many times. "And this? 

The mecha's limber spine arched, pushing his hips forward as his eyes drifted closed. "Yes — oh please, please, _please…_ "

The temptation to get some of his own back was irresistible: as he'd noted, Joe had made a delightful habit of teasing him in the past. He withdrew his hand just enough to deny the mecha the more intense stimulation he was seeking, then gently commanded: "Tell me what you want."

Against his mouth, a more demanding moan: Joe's sexual affect vocalization program was being networked into the new paradigm. Hobby did not permit it to sway him, although it tempted him as viscerally as the heat of the artificial glans barely indenting his right palm. " _Tell me._ "

Joe's eyes snapped open again, the words falling from his perfect lips in a silken rush of pure heat: "You — I want _you_ — your mouth, devouring me — your hands, stroking and pulling me — your wonderful thick cock, using me in ways I've never been used before, taking me to heights I've never —" Then Hobby's hand closed tightly around him again and effectively robbed him of the power of speech. It was an effect that Hobby decided he could get used to, as much as he enjoyed the sound of the mecha's voice, and he took the opportunity to lean closer and murmur against Joe's ear:

"I'm afraid you'll have to settle for my hand today, but rest assured that I'll break in your other functionalities just as soon as I'm reasonably able." 

"… tonight?" A whisper so patently hopeful that Hobby couldn't help but smile.

"Soon," he promised, and increased the force and pace of his stroking. "And I promise you, I'll make it well worth the wait. It's the least I can offer, in return for all you've done for me."

"But —" Hobby could hear the frown in his voice. "— my function — is to —"

"I'm referring to so much more than sensuality simulation." A rougher twist of his hand, making Joe tremble. "Is that good?"

"Oh… oh, _yes!"_

He traced the shell of the mecha's ear with the tip of his tongue: it wasn't an area he'd intensively mapped, but Joe reacted anyway with a breathy sigh and a quiver. "Would you like it to feel even better?"

"How… could it possibly…?"

"All you need do is ask."

A pause, full of spiralling tension on both sides. "Allen, please… I want… I _need_ …"

His heart sang at the phrasing and at the emphasis, full of such vehemence. "Tell me," he whispered, and Joe responded promptly if barely coherently: 

"I want you… I need you… forever… everything… please, _please,_ give me —"

"Everything," he promised through the tightening of his throat, and bestowed the climactic sequence: "Solstice… Astral… Eclipse…"

Joe's whole body froze, every joint and servo locking as the command phrase triggered a cataclysmic storm of internal feedback, flooding his sequencers and overloading his process paths. Of course there was no ejaculate — a lack which could be later remedied by technology already perfected for the LX9 line —  but the low moaning cry that peaked in his throat, while more alien than any vocalization Hobby had ever heard him utter before, was gorgeous and eloquent nonetheless. Through the intensity of his own sympathetic sexual reaction Hobby was dimly aware of a twin cracking sound from the edge of his desk as Joe's hands clamped down and broke it, but the damage was insignificant in comparison to the success of the experiment. On the monitor, all the vectors ran into the white and stayed there, fluctuating at levels between twelve and twenty-four percent above normal optimum function.

Joe was still keening when, five seconds later, Hobby whispered the termination string for the climactic phase: "Eclipse… Astral… Solstice." At once the mecha's vocalization faded and onscreen all vectors plummeted back to low optimum levels, still vacillating erratically over a much smaller range of response as Joe's sequencer buffers and both process paths tried to reach equilibrium again after an overclock event greater than anything they'd ever experienced before. It was precisely what Hobby had designed and he watched them closely, alert for any sign of lasting critical stress, but they settled down within three seconds to a slow looping pattern of oscillation, the process path datastreams twining lazily around each other like partners in a tango, the sequencers activity profile in a momentary lull.

For a long, breathless, glowing moment — silence. Carefully Hobby released the mecha's erection and laid his right hand gently on the inside of Joe's right thigh, slipping his left arm fully around Joe's waist and simply holding him close, waiting patiently for him to recover. By small degrees Joe's body unlocked, until his cheek came to rest against the side of Hobby's neck and his artificial breathing resumed with a tiny indrawn gasp, followed by a soft silvery sigh: "…Allen?"

"Yes, Joe." He let his happiness infuse the soft words. "I'm here, and I'm so very proud of you! You did better than I could have possibly hoped." And then, because he was still in a slightly mischievous frame of mind: "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you enjoyed that."


	8. Chapter 8

For several seconds Joe did not respond, although his process flow rate began a gradual rise; then, with an almost audible _click_ , the process paths fell back into pragmatic alignment and his sequencer arrays came alive with service prompts. He will still registering a higher than usual degree of neuronal feedback and that particular piece of data filled Hobby with even greater delight, proving as it did that this aspect of Orison was enhancing Joe's cognition even further. When the mecha finally spoke again his voice was low and lilting: "'Enjoyed' doesn't even begin to cover it. I feel…"

Hobby held him a little closer, resisting the urge to pull back and examine his facial cues: best to let Joe himself determine the intensity of social interaction. "Go on."

Another sigh, and a nearly dreamy inflection: "Like I'm still among the stars…"

"Hm." He studied the screen, his own level of sexual excitation dropping as his analytical faculties came fully online again. "I'm not surprised: your process paths haven't quite harmonized yet. I may have to write a command string to tighten up the post-climactic response of your flow management engine." 

"You needn't on my account. It's absolutely lovely." Joe tilted his head back to look Hobby in the face with eyes that were once more solidly and beautifully green, and the expression of sleek satisfaction there made Hobby's heart sing anew — until a subtle heat infused Joe's sculpted features and he opened his thighs a little wider, inclining his pelvis upward, presenting his pretty cock for more servicing. "Mmh… oh, my darling…"

Well, that certainly brought a flush of heat back into Hobby's nervous system. "You want more, do you?"

" _Please._ "

It wasn't surprising in the least — Joe was, after all, physically inexhaustible, and the sensation pursuit subroutines would keep running until shut down by the spoken command sequence — but… "I'm not sure that would be wise at this point. I need to run some deeper diagnostic scans to —"

An appealing little pout. "Please?"

Hobby shook his head, hardening his heart against the mecha's charms — not an easy task under the most optimal circumstances, and certainly not when he was so hot and bothered himself. A surge of love and lust commingled rose fiercely from his heart, urging him to bend Joe back over the desk and give him everything he so dearly desired, but the office furniture had taken more than enough punishment for one day. Instead he settled for making a promise: "We'll try again later, after I've fine-tuned the stress manifestation compensators."

The pout became a frown. "And how long will that take?"

"I'll get right on it tomorrow morning. Depending on the results of the deep diagnostic, I could wrap everything up within a day or two after that."

A flash of something more electric sharpened Joe's eyes, verging on rebellion, and he persisted: "I'm not sure I can wait that long."

Hobby smiled — Joe's original programming for tender dominance in the bedroom could sometimes manifest itself as an unusual degree of forwardness for a mecha, and the Orison upgrade had only enhanced that tendency. Hobby cherished the effect. "As soon as I shut down the new sensuality subroutine you should find that the input pursuit motivation will diminish significantly," he reassured, stroking Joe's inner thigh once, then transferring his right hand to the robot's left hip and offering a conversational diversion: "Tell me, how did it feel?"

Joe's smile in response was radiant. "Like fire in every fibre of my being, yearning to draw you into itself and never let you go." The expression of joy lingered a moment, then grew more thoughtful and intent. "Oh, Allen… is this what orga experience?"

Amused, he slid his left arm a little more tightly around Joe's waist and barely resisted the urge to start kissing him all over again. "It certainly sounds like it, yes."

"No wonder my customers kept coming back." His gaze seemed to turn inward, conducting a memory archive scan. "Oddly enough, the thought of any of them doesn't —"

"It wouldn't. This subroutine is keyed to whoever issues the initial command phrase, and to no one else."

Delighted comprehension brightened his aspect again. "So you want to keep me all for yourself!"

This time he did not smile. "I always have, and I always will."

"How well I know it!" His musical voice rippled with laughter, then fell to a seductive murmur as he hooded his jade eyes and leaned forward to press lingering kisses to Hobby's jawline, breathing hotly: "And I adore you for it…"

The touch of those silken lips was extremely persuasive, but Hobby had gone into this phase of testing with a specific unit in mind: a single sexual encounter, from preliminaries to climax. He stepped back, putting Joe gently but firmly away from him, and moved further to Joe's right, resting both hands on the desktop and turning his attention fully to the monitor. "Computer, pause preliminary scans and begin deep diagnostic monitoring of the subject, using previously established parameters." 

Now the pout was clearly audible. "My dearest, I _do_ adore you, but you can be terribly single-minded when you get your teeth into a scientific problem."

Hobby maintained his focus on the screen, studying the new data it revealed. "Are you saying that I'm no fun?"

"At this particular moment, not one tenth as much fun as I'd like."

"Well, I promise you that once I've made the necessary adjustments I'll show you some tricks that will completely redeem my reputation in your eyes." Satisfied that the deep diagnostic scans were proceeding as intended, he glanced sidelong at Joe — still in that deliciously wanton open-legged pose, still with his clothing flayed open, still outrageously beautiful — and felt his heart drawn irresistibly from its moorings. This time he could not resist laying his right hand lightly on the mecha's right knee. "Although I must admit that the prospect of taking you to bed like this tonight is extremely tempting."

He widened his eyes and shifted ever so slightly, drawing back his shoulders only a fraction of an inch, but that tiny opening of his posture multiplied his appeal tenfold. "I _will_ be good, I promise!"

"I know you wouldn't intend to hurt me," Hobby mused, "but… I could bind you, I suppose, to remind you not to make use of your hands."

Joe's pupils were fully dilated and his simulated breath was deepening and quickening once more. "And you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?" 

"I think you'd look very fetching in red leather cuffs, yes." Now _there_ was a thought to raise his blood pressure, surprisingly yet undeniably arousing. He followed it without hesitation: "Though I suppose a necktie would serve in a pinch."

A shiver ran through Joe again and he inclined his head toward his master, his jewelled eyes practically incandescent as he purred with lascivious ardour: "And you'll fuck me long and hard then, won't you? When I can't hurt you, and I can't get away."

 _Oh God, yes!_ Hobby's entire body sang, especially his cock, which had resurged with a vengeance. Joe had a positive talent for awakening his full range of sexual potentiality, including the darker and occasionally more violent aspects — but of course for Joe every sexual experience was a positive one, so long as he was being used with enthusiasm. He tightened his grip on Joe's knee in rebuke, a deeper register of need resonating in his voice at the brief slideshow of warm savage images the mecha's words brought to mind: "All you ever need do is tell me to stop, and I will."

"What if I don't want you to stop?" Joe challenged, another smile lingering on his eminently kissable lips. "What if I want you to keep on doing deliciously carnal things to me, for hours and hours?"

He laughed aloud, then modified that expression of incredulity with a more tender caress of Joe's knee. "Why do I get the feeling that I may have just opened up Pandora's box?"

Joe, who had read a comprehensive set of Greek myths shortly after the Orison upgrade, did not miss the reference. He did, however, sidestep it, leaning in as far as his grip on the now-cracked edge of the desk would allow to whisper: "Please, Allen — let me touch you now. With my hands, with my mouth… I promise I'll be careful. You know I can do so very many marvellous things to you, and I so desperately want to repay you for —"

"I know." He glanced at the screen just long enough to mark the precise time, then yielded enough to press a quick fond kiss to Joe's right cheekbone. "But considering what you just did to my desk, I think I'll wait until the stress manifestation compensators have been recalibrated before I take that risk."

"Or until you can tie me up."

"Mm, yes." He removed his hand — too dangerously tempting — and straightened to his full height to gaze down at the mecha's ardent expression. "Or that."

A teasing quirk of those full lips as Joe tipped his head back, his gaze both submissive and provocative. "I suppose you have a riding crop tucked away somewhere too, you naughty man!"

"Introducing a light element of proximate pain into the mix?" Hobby pretended to consider that, modifying his solemn expression with a hint of a smile. "I feel a hypothesis coming on…"

"And an experiment as well, I hope?" Angelic, and shameless, and knowingly innocent, and utterly sinful. _Yes, definitely tonight,_ Hobby concluded, his pulse accelerating at the thought of all that he would teach, and all that he would learn.

"Perhaps," he said aloud, maintaining a light playful tone over the seething subtext of mutual desire. "But how would I go about establishing a control group?"

"I sincerely hope you wouldn't!" Joe retorted, and was just opening his mouth to continue the game when Hobby's monitor chimed sharply, announcing an incoming video call.

He looked to the screen, incredulous at the abysmal timing, then turned to tell Joe to get out of the camera's line of sight — but Joe was already gone, around behind Hobby's back and ten feet away toward the railing overlooking the lower level, leaving only the fractured edge of the desk behind. A lover-robot, of course, would have excellent experience-induced reflexes when it came to avoiding the scrutiny of husbands and wives — or of its lover's colleagues, when they happened to intrude upon an illicitly intimate moment conducted during business hours.

Hobby barely had time to put his professional face back on before the screen changed from Joe's scans to the avuncular aspect of James Drew, looking hale and hearty as usual. "A grand good morning to you, Professor!" he boomed genially, lighting up the screen with a smile wide enough to show almost all his teeth at once. "I was wondering if you'd had a chance to look over my denier circuit proposal yet?"

"Ah." He'd schooled his expression to one of calm composure, but he was suddenly aware that his erection hadn't gotten the message to stand down — and although he was wearing loosely tailored pants, if Drew's gaze happened to shift downward… carefully he stepped back and sat down in his office chair again, trying to keep his movements casual. "As a matter of fact, I was just about to start reviewing it. If you'll give me a couple of hours to —"

"I'm afraid Norton and company aren't willing to be patient," Drew interrupted, his plummy tones dripping apology. "They want to see me right now, and I was wondering if you could put in an appearance, strictly to back up my —"

"Of course." Hobby's mind was racing in two different directions: the denier circuit schematics, a cool rational mental construct, and the image of Joe beneath him on their bed, his hands bound behind him with one of his own ties, his slender thighs parted, trembling and whimpering with need while his master — "Ah, yes… where?"

"Norton's office, ten minutes." His grin became a puzzled frown. "I say, Professor, are you feeling all right?"

"Me?" Damn it, he had to start using words of more than two syllables! "I'm perfectly fine. Why do you ask?"

"No particular reason, only you look… well, a little feverish."

"I think I might be coming down with that viral bug that's going around." From beside the railing, a trill of laughter too soft to be picked up by the monitor's microphone; Hobby kept his expression dignified and his voice even. "Norton's office, then, in ten minutes?"

Drew nodded gratefully. "You're a life saver — and I won't forget this," he promised, a second before his image disappeared and Joe's cube scans popped back up on the screen.

Drawing a deep breath, Hobby sank back fully in his chair and took hold of the arm rests with both hands and closed his eyes, counting slowly to ten. By the time he was finished his erection was starting to obey his commands and Joe's light quick footsteps had crossed to floor to stand by the end of the desk; he opened his eyes, contemplated the damage to the piece of furniture in question, then raised his gaze to the mecha, who was once more neatly and fully clothed. Joe's smile was slight but suggested such clear pride in his own abilities, and such satisfaction with the world in general, that Hobby wanted nothing more than to spend the next hour simply being with him and drinking him in…

… but duty, and political expediency, called. He sighed and rose from his seat. "I have to go. Sit down, and remain here while the deep diagnostic proceeds."

"And how long will that take?" He sat down at once, crossing his legs at the knee, and looked up at Hobby brightly — even with the Orison sensuality protocol in play, he knew when business took precedence over pleasure. 

"Twenty-two minutes, give or take three minutes." Going down on one knee in front of the mecha, he gazed into those gleaming eyes and took Joe's hands in both his own. "Now, look directly into my eyes… Equinox. Tendril. Jasmine…" 

A fraction of a second's blankness; a blink; a slight cock of his head, and all the subliminal passion flowed out of him, replaced by his inbuilt willingness to serve — and nothing more. 

Hobby smiled at him, and gently squeezed his fingers. "How do you feel?"

Joe seemed to consider that solemnly for a moment. "As I did before you spoke those words to me for the first time," he said, scanning Hobby's face intently. "But…"

He glanced quickly sidelong at the screen, seeing nothing there out of the ordinary. "But?"

It was a subtle change, barely perceptible — Hobby was certain that nobody else would have caught it — but it was definitely there: a trace of heat, the faintest glow of lingering embers and a deeper purr in that musical voice:  "But — I remember. And I know now that there's so much more yet to come between us, more than I'd ever dared to imagine, though I might dream for a thousand years."

Hobby's heart swelled in his breast; he pressed a fervent kiss to Joe's fingers before rising to take his leave, too happy to say a word. And as he stepped through the workshop doors he heard the sunlit room behind him brighten even more with sweet quiet melody as Joe, irrepressible, began singing again: 

" _C’est toi pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie_ … _Il me l’a dit, l’a juré pour la vie…_ "

THE END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation of the lyrics:
> 
> "C’est toi pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie… Il me l’a dit, l’a juré pour la vie…"
> 
> It's him for me, me for him, for life… he has told me, he has sworn it to me, for life…


End file.
